April 11, 2010
A few days ago, my seventeen year old cherub asked his dad to go check to see if he left his running watch in his car. It would be a strange request, unless you know my cherub.
This is the boy who went away to camp and called four days later to announce that someone had stolen his wallet. He was at camp with his teammates, so my husband and I were a bit disbelieving that any of my son’s roommates would have stolen his wallet.
“Are you sure it’s stolen?” was our first question.
“Did you check in your back pocket?” was our next. We went down the list from there. My son informed us that even Coach had helped him look for it and couldn’t find it, so it must be stolen. I instructed him to not accuse anyone and just assume that whoever took it needed it more than him and to not worry, we’d get him all new stuff when he got home – a new wallet and license and even new spending money.
Then he got home and after I cleaned out his duffel bag, guess what was found, his wallet.
So, my husband went out to my son’s car, last Tuesday night, and looked for the watch. This is one of those watches with GPS so my son can track his running mileage. Then it has a program which tells him what his average mile time was, or his pace, how far he went and what his mileage so far for the week is. It is a major part of his training routine, to be sure he is running far enough and fast enough. Why else would we spend over $200 on a watch?
The watch was not in the car. I checked his backpack. It was not there. We asked for a retelling of exactly what had happened that his watch was missing.
“I put it on the hood of my car, got distracted by everyone else, then drove away with it still on my hood.”
I guess he thought the watch was David Blaine and could jump through glass and metal on its own. It wasn’t.
My husband drove to the high school, hoping the watch was sitting in the parking lot. He figured forty minutes out of his Tuesday night was worth $200. He’s a gambler that way. Too bad he lost that night.
When we broke the news to the cherub, he was eerily calm. “That’s okay. I need a new watch anyway.”
Before I tell you my reaction, I need to do some back story here. The cherub does not have a job and that new watch was going to be paid for by… right, you got it.
I laughed. Not the jolly, belly laugh you might have expected. More the high-pitched, my head suddenly hurts laugh.
“But Mom,” he responded. “That’s how we upgrade in our family.”
Really? What family is he spending his time with when I think he’s in school or in bed asleep.
“Think about our boat.”
And I did. We had a perfectly good 18 foot ski boat for 15 years. Sure the upholstery was ripped and the gel coat was a bit faded, but it ran fine, well, except for the occasional smoke coming from the engine episodes, but that usually happened right when you were ready to jump in to cool off anyway. We kept that boat, until it was put to pasture in the middle of the Mojave Desert, flying free from its trailer to deposit itself where we would no longer insist it keep up with our friends’ new boats. Then we bought a new boat.
I sighed. So, the cherub had learned that if you have something that works perfectly good, you do not replace it, no matter how much you want the new, shiny whatever. You wait until the thing is no longer functioning, or it’s destroyed… or lost.
Luckily, when we had bought him that new fangled watch, I took his old watch. I wore it once and was so depressed by the honest facts, I haven’t worn it again.
I went to my bedroom and pulled out that old watch and handed it to the cherub.
“That’s okay, I’ll run without a watch for awhile.”
This week, I will be a good consumer and shop, but only for those things I really need.
